Roberto calls me at lunchtime.
“At 4 p.m.,” he says, “we’re meeting a group of girls who love basketball.”
I don’t play basketball. I play rugby. So I decide I’ll improvise.
We arrive four minutes early. They’re already there. And of course… there are four of them.
I do what I’ve always done best: tell stories, crack jokes, make them laugh.
Chapter four of the imaginary handbook on winning a woman is very clear: make her laugh first.
It works. But women have their own choreography. They arrive quietly. They leave the same way.
Four days later, one of them calls me. She asks if I want to go out with all four again.
I say yes. Not courage. Just innocence.
At dinner they look disinterested, but each of them is running at least four plans in her head. I only know one of them. I’m not worried.
As we leave the restaurant, I joke with all of them. Then one of the four stops me cold:
“Excuse me… who told you that you could put your hand on my shoulder?”
Touché.
Four years later, she becomes the mother of my children. And later, my wife.
We start dating after four days. Four weeks later, we’re invited to a New Year’s Eve party. I spend the entire night dancing with a math teacher.
On January 4th… I change girlfriends.
Mathematics attracts me. And apparently, the feeling is mutual.
We move faster than reasonable people probably should. One day she tells me:
“When we’re together, you never say anything. You’re always so controlled.”
I tell her: “I’ll surprise you.”
During a moment of closeness, I whisper:
“We’re perfectly aligned. I relate to you the way 2×2 relates to 4.”
She laughs. Then she says:
“I was supposed to marry a doctor. I asked him for four months to think about it. Enough time to forget you.”
Four years later, I marry the girl from that first dinner. Four days later, I leave for a journey that has lasted forty years. And I only needed four minutes to tell you how it began.
Nice to meet you. Mr. Four.
Nando
Everything felt perfect for one reason: four is divisible… and I did exactly the same thing.